January 14th, 2009
By John DeFore
It may not be the best timing in the world — with plummeting 401(k) funds convincing many Americans to give up vacations for a while — but quite a few resources are popping up lately aimed at the green-minded traveler.
Some, like the enjoyable Frommer’s book 500 Places to See Before They Disappear, emphasize the awe-inspiring vistas and ancient towns whose existence is threatened by climate change and human intervention. But others focus on how to see all those wonders while doing as little as possible to hasten their disappearance.
Alastair Fuad-Luke has written one of the most appealing of these, The Eco-Travel Guide. While it’s easy to imagine hardcore environmentalists arguing with Fuad-Luke over the virtues of this or that entry, he does accomplish his apparent goals, one of which seems to be to show that even the conspicuous consumers who subscribe to luxury-travel magazines can find greener options for their next getaway.
Although chapters are included that focus on subjects like sustainably-produced travel gear and moral questions like, “Is our ‘idea of travel’ sustainable?,” the bulk of the book consists of single-page entries on various destinations around the world, each pairing photos and a one-paragraph description with specific bullet points that address a given site’s green architecture, its footprint-reducing efforts, and its contributions to the communities and ecosystems around it.
By necessity, the entries aren’t thorough enough to be one’s sole source of information: You wouldn’t want to buy a ticket to China just because the Banyan Tree Ringha looks spectacular on the page and is said to get its water from a nearby snowmelt. But as a wide-ranging source of inspiration for eco-conscious travel, it could hardly do better in a single volume — without, that is, avoiding the high end entirely and promoting only no-frills voyages in which an English lodge’s fair-trade hot chocolate or a Dominican spa/resort’s impressive electricity savings aren’t quite enough to make the grade.
Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media
